


Pain o' Chocolate

by Anonymous



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Everything Hurts, Gen, Heavy Angst, Ouch, Sadness, Se.N, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dick is in a coma.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 12
Kudos: 77
Collections: Anonymous, Gotham Square (Batfam Discord Fics)





	Pain o' Chocolate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraKant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/gifts).



> Here is your gift Aurora, please take this sadness off my hands so I don't have to cry anymore.

The ward had that clean, antiseptic smell. It was overpowering, but Bruce was used to it by now―he had visited so often after all.

The daisies in his hands felt small and far too crushable. Bruce never liked holding flowers, but these ones were Dick's favourite.

Today, the ward was quiet. That was good. Dick had a private room, of course, but it was still nicer when the hospital felt unharried.

“Mr. Wayne,” said the receptionist, smiling pleasantly. “You're a little earlier today.”

Bruce smiled serenely back, even though he felt nothing inside to project any kind of emotion into his face.

“It's a special day,” he replied, holding up the daisies.

The receptionist―Eliza, he remembered faintly―made an interested noise in the back of her throat, eyebrows rising as she stood up to swipe her card and grant him admittance.

“Really?” she asked. “What is the occasion, if I might ask?”

Bruce smiled again, but this time he felt nothing but grief. _He was a failure, a horrible parent, a terrible human being who had taken in a kid and_ _―_

“Not a happy one, I'm afraid,” he replied, feeling suddenly translucent as he ran his free hand through his unwashed locks. It didn't appear greasy on the outside, but Bruce could _feel_ it. Perhaps his whole person was the same―perfectly normal on the outside, but twisted and ugly once anything touched him.

“No?” Eliza blinked at him, waiting a moment, and Bruce suddenly remembered he was in public.

He shook his head. “No,” he repeated back to her, the word feeling heavy on his tongue. “Today is the day Dick's parents died.”

Eliza frowned, but she was painfully used to concealing her emotions, it seemed. That perhaps came with time on hospital turf.

“I am sorry,” she said with a nod. “Truly.”

Bruce didn't really know what to say, so he swallowed tightly and gave a single nod accompanied by a raspy, “Thanks.”

Eliza nodded in return and held the door for Bruce as he stepped through.

The way to Dick's room was familiar. Bruce had made his way along this same route an innumerable amount of times. The years had worn it into his body like the muscle memory that came with being Batman.

When Bruce arrived at the door to Dick's room, he slid it open and smiled, even though it felt just as heavy on his lips as all the others had.

“Good morning Dick,” he said to the room, shucking his jacket.

He didn't get a reply.

He wasn't expecting one.

The monitor beeped wordlessly.

_A coma, almost five years ago now. After a confrontation with the Joker and his bride._

Bruce could recall the day, the hour and the minute with more clarity than he could recall anything else in his life.

“ _He won't wake up.” The hospital staff had said with sadness. “The chance are… almost non-existent. 99% of the time, children who suffer this kind of brain trauma never do.”_

Bruce still clung to the one percent they offered him―he threw money at the hospital left, right and center, so much in fact that they named a whole ward after him and transferred Dick to it as it's first patient.

The flowers in the vase were almost wilted, so Bruce removed them and threw them into the trash-can―Lilies, _probably Clark who left them, then_ _._ Sometimes people remembered Dick, but the accident had been so long ago that Bruce wasn't surprised that most had moved on.

Bruce would never move on though, he couldn't.

Dick took another steady breath in and then another out as Bruce tipped the stale water from the vase down the sink and re-filled it with fresh water for his bouquet of daises.

“They're blossoming beautiful Dick,” he said to the silent room as he set the vase back down onto the side-table. “I wish you could see them.”

Dick took another inhalation, followed by an exhalation.

Bruce lowered himself into the green chair by the left of Dick's bed and wrapped his fingers around Dick's own small, slender hands―he had always felt like such a log in comparison to his lithe, acrobatic son. There were so many memories, so many times Bruce had taken for granted, when he'd thought their days together would last forever. Batman and Robin, fighting for justice, side by side.

It had been stupid to think they could last forever―even if Dick had never gotten into the encounter with the Prince of Crime and his equally as ruthless girlfriend. He would have grown up and gone to college and moved away eventually.

_He would have grown up._

Bruce's grip around Dick's fingers tightens infinitesimally.

“I went to their graves today,” he says, jerking himself away from a road he cannot go down today. “I visited them for you.”

Silence.

“I left them Forget-Me-Not's―I know you said your mother loved them, I remember, Dickie.”

An alarm sounds in another room.

“Alfred made sugar-cookies,” he continues. “Your father had a sweet tooth, or so you told me.”

Somewhere far off, a baby cries.

“Oh and Wally got in to business school, I know you'd be proud of him for that. He says he wants to run the family business―I'm sure you two would have had fun going to college together.”

Suddenly, Bruce has run out of words. The book he brought―Cinderella and the Seven Dwarves―feels childish in his bag. Dick had loved the tale though. Maybe he would still enjoy it, even now. Maybe he wouldn't though.

Either way. Bruce's throat feels to tight to keep speaking.

He's tired. So tired.

It's been five years.

Bruce lowers his head down to Dick's hand and, before he can stop them, the tears start.

The apologies fall one by one off his tongue, but they are useless to both Dick and also to himself. Apologies will not bring his son back. Apologies will not bring _Dick_ back.

The monitor beeps.

The silence rings.

The baby cries.

The world turns on without Dick Grayson lighting it up with his smile.

Bruce cracks apart like a broken husk.


End file.
